Still a left-leaning centrist.
I grew up conservative. I think the one person who agitated me enough to start considering what I believed was Rush Limbaugh and how ugly he talked about feminists that he didn’t like. Still today Republicans I know will exclaim, “But he was talking about the EXTREMIST feminists!” He wasn’t.
It wasn’t just him though. I have never understood how regulating morality based on your religion was an example of freedom. I don’t understand how taking away body autonomy is freedom. I feel like in order to be a conservative you have to be against personal freedom and more about “state rights”. Yet I hear conservatives talk about how liberals are taking away our “personal freedoms” because they expect everyone to be treated fairly, regardless of their race, gender, religion, etc.
I’m not what they call leftist. I’m more of a moderate, but I’m definitely Democrat. I think people worry too much about gun control and less about underlying causes of violence. But then I think everyone deserves health care access, including covering the cost if one can’t cover it. I think we should focus more on mental health and helping people instead of incarcerating them when they exhibit features of their mental illness, and if we DO lock them up, then medicate them, make SURE when they get out they have immediate access to their medications. I think people need to take more responsibility for their own good health and their own lives, but other people need to understand not everyone can do this and it’s pointless to let society go to shit just because you don’t think people don’t deserve basic health care (including mental) just because they can’t afford it. Then again I don’t think the middle class should be paying for their health care plus all the people who can’t afford health care.
The older I get the less I identify with Republicans MY age from my area. They are all so wrapped up in worrying about illegal immigrants taking jobs and transgenders raping little girls and Muslims terrorizing the country and I’m just thinking we have really big issues we should be worrying about that don’t get addressed because Republicans get so upset. And this is just the people I know, that I grew up with. I’m sure they are different in different areas. My brother is a really smart guy, a 28 year AP History teacher with several teaching and history related degrees who is also Republican but even he has grown disillusioned lately. He loathes Trump but yesterday when I told him I was worried he shot back with, “Well I guess Democrats need to come up with a more attractive candidate in four years!” He loathes Trump but he blames Democrats for him when his own party chose Trump.
Fair enough - I thought “current liberals aren’t conservative” was too obvious so assumed you meant something else.
Well alright then. 
Yes. I am reminded of the old quote, “If you not a liberal at 25 you have no heart, if your not a conservative at 40 you have no brain.”
Applies to me, however I think of myself as more in the middle of the road.
Was quite conservative up to around 30yo, grown progressively more progressive as time passed.
I wouldn’t say I flip-flopped, but I have changed some views. My parents were firm Dems and remained so even when they moved to the suburbs (many people switched to the Reps when they moved out of the city). On the other hand, my parents were firmly anti-union. There were reasons for that. Some unions were plainly criminal (where is Jimmy Hoffa’s body?) Then there was the (illegal) closed shop construction union in Philadelphia that was determined to keep blacks firmly out.
Then came McCarthy who moved me further to the left to get as far away from him as possible. I believe he did serious damage to the US. One effect of his miserable existence was to rid the State Dept of all the China hands whose main crime was that of having predicted Mao’s victory. I conjecture that one of the effects of this was to rid State of people who might have warned that Viet Nam was a quagmire, but certainly was not a Chinese puppet state.
Economically, I describe myself as a Josephian: run deficits during lean years and surpluses during the fat ones. This is really textbook Keynesian, much as that is denied. The conservatives like to decry the fact that he advocated deficits during the depression, but advocated surpluses during boom times. Conservatives of course run huge deficits at all times, while advocating surpluses. Compare Clinton and Bush. I have come to realize that the near disappearance of unions has totally screwed the American workers. I now am a strong advocate for labor unions. Also damaged the economy because workers spend most of the money they make while the oligarchs save theirs and use it only to make more money. While 91% tax rate is probably too high, the 70% that Kennedy’s tax cut left seems about right. And I would put in a confiscatory estate tax above a certain point. And no hiding the money in a politically active trust.
Are there any who actually believe in a free market? I sort of do. But, as even Adam Smith realized, only strong government regulation can keep it free. Every sufficiently large business is trying to become a monopolist and only governments can stop them. I saw two letters in the NY Times yesterday from financial advisers who claimed that making them put their clients interest first would be a horrible infringement of their rights (to screw their clients).
On the other hand, I have moved to some Libertarian views. I am at least dubious of affirmative action. That’s how you get a Clarence Thomas on the supreme court. If I had my 'druthers, I would spend loads of money (halve the military budget–it has loads of pork) to support the poorest families . US policy virtually enforced residential segregation and even, going back 100 years, did end the integration of the civil service. In addition to that, I think the drug laws have, overall, done more harm than good and I would repeal all of them. I am anti-abortion, but pro-choice. My wife and I have our own views, but would not impose them on others. Much the same with prostitution and gambling. None of the government’s business.
I get it. I’m saying I don’t fit in with even a what is commonly recognized as a generalized liberal, conservative or libertarian view. On some issues I’m staunchly conservative, some rabidly liberal and on some I’m whole hog libertarian “get the government out of this” - in a fairly equal mix. None of the groups would want me at their rally. I’d just be a source of consternation.
I understand that for your personal experience. The part I was commenting was to those who said they didn’t understand how anyone could be 100% in line, and label themselves thusly.
In other words, many people do have a range of views and still can label themselves. That may not work for you, but it’s the general sentiment I was responding to.
I get that, too, but I also know people who always vote straight ticket and consider themselves solely liberal/conservative/libertarian. That is what I can’t understand. I should have been more clear.
Hell, I can’t even pick a favorite color or food. To me it’s all situational.
Nope. By the time I was 20 I’d pretty much firmly rooted myself in revolutionary socialism and have been that way for close to thirty years now.
Not yet. I have always been a lefty, in favor of democratic socialism. Nothing has happened to alter that orientation in any significant way. I would say I’m also sort of a 95% pacifist. There are some limited situations for which a military solution might be appropriate IMO. But in the vast majority of cases, I do not think military options should be used.
I identify as a conservative but only because I favor more conservative solutions to many liberal issues that are generally denied by the republicans.
My feeling is that many federal and state agencies tend to be staffed primarily by liberals so tend to go too far to the left instead of remaining politically neutral.
Politics. I understand some of both sides. Hell, I’ve met some of both sides and I’ve seen how (and where) they recruit in my little suburbia.
Still, there’s only one side that’s organised enough, overly well armed enough, well financed enough, and truly bat-shit-crazy enough to be an ever-present and ugly threat to what I’ve known as the American way of life.
My parents saw it… and though I’ve done my fair share of rebelling against my parents, I’ve been lucky enough to see with my own eyes just who these “assholes who have good jobs but like to spend their free time destroying and tearing down other people just for a mean spiteful laugh” are.
Checks and balances were created to keep those people, and the ones who want to be like them, from ever having free and unsupervised reign.
As long as there people who use money and power that way, I’ll always be on the side opposing them.
I’ve shifted more liberal as I’ve become older. In high school I had a set of politically interested types as some of my friends, and they happened to be conservative (1980s conservative, not tea-party loons). Since this meshed pretty closely with my family and my friends’ parents, I didn’t think this was anything but the default way to be.
I was more or less apolitical through my 20s and 30s; much more concerned with career, women, etc…
Now that I’m older, I’m starting to be more compassionate than I had been; even though I’m fairly successful, I can definitely identify points where I could have easily messed up and been in sticky situations. Or where our family could have been worse off than we were…
Plus, on social issues, I’ve realized that I just don’t care. I mean, if someone’s gay, it’s none of my business, and I’m not going to treat them differently, and don’t think the law should either, regardless of what anyone’s religious beliefs may say.
That said, I’m still fairly skeptical of the benefits of illegal immigration and think that it needs to be tightened up somewhat.
I was politically under-informed for most of my life, committed to work and, in my free time, following my mother’s advice to “play as hard as I worked.” 
By the standards of my family (father excluded) — my mother was a friend of Cesar Chavez — and Berkeleyite friends, I was right-of-center, and thought old-time liberals and Chomskyites were zany.
I began moving leftward when I started paying more attention to politics; this was about the time that Gingrich was making a mockery of politics. Reading details about America’s interventions in Iran and elsewhere was enlightening. Certain “libertarian” ideas like school vouchers that sound good in the abstract, are exposed as scams when you learn practical details. Et cetera. Informed citizens tend to be liberals.
If we had two honest parties, one left-of-center and one right-of-center, I still might be more-or-less centrist. Given the American reality, it is absurd not to follow a straight Democratic ticket.
Yes. I went from not giving a shit to being left of center. Traveling the world can make that happen.
I haven’t flip flopped necessarily but I definitely lean more to the left than I have in the past. I have always been pro-military (and I served) but that’s about the only thing that I think is “right” leaning. I am also in favor of women’s rights, LGBT rights, and I support a woman’s right to chose. I don’t see what’s wrong with pot – I don’t smoke it myself because I’m L7, but I don’t see why it’s any more dangerous than alcohol.
I used to vote for the candidates that I liked but now I can’t imagine voting Republican. Not the way they are now with enabling racism, hatred, and non-science. Reaganomics seems like a nice way to get rich people richer and not much else.
My wife is farther left than I am, which is awesome.
I haven’t flip flopped, but I’ve gone from not caring beyond hating both Republicans and Democrats, to caring a lot and going full leftist/communist. Still hate both liberals and conservatives!
Funny, mine too. When I was a kid, he was a hardcore, Barry Goldwater-voting, National Review-reading conservative.
His politics, now that he’s in his eighties, are indistinguishable from those of Bernie Sanders.
Me, I guess I’ve gone from center-liberal, Clintonite (before Bill Clinton was on the national scene) to seriously leftist. But I still can’t stand liberals of the Park Slope variety.
I suspect that I am not that unusual, in not having so much changed my principles, as discovered more about them, and altered how I expressed them accordingly.
I thought I was a hard core, right wing patriot when I was a kid, then thought for a while that I was a wild-eyed left winger when I was a teen, and eventually settled in to being a “don’t you dare try to stick that label on me” person.
Having pondered all that (I’m a born ponderer), I realize that I was always me, and the reasons why I seemed to become whatever I thought I’d become at each juncture, was always because of the same basic sensibilities and values I ALWAYS believed in.
I have always believed in doing whatever was LOGICAL, based on ALL OF THE FACTS, in order to see to the best results for as many people as possible. Sometimes that means war. Sometimes that means turning the other cheek and going for peace. Sometimes it means telling everyone to “suck it up.” Sometimes it means telling everyone to open their pockets and hearts and share.
But the GOAL remains the same throughout.